The Inevitability of Self Interest

I was a junior in high school when I first started to get interested in philosophy. The first book I ever picked up was, as I believe is typical for many that get interested in philosophy at such an age, something related to Nietzsche, A Nietzsche Reader if my memory serves me correctly. Somewhere in this same time period I began reading the works of Ayn Rand (and no, I don’t consider her works of fiction as works of philosophy). After finishing a number of books relating to these two authors and, I believe, those relating to a few others, I decided it was time to start putting my ideas on paper.

The result was lots of evening trips to Barnes and Noble (about 45 minutes from my house), where I would consume mass amounts of caffeine and write down “my philosophy” in a journal I had bought specifically for this purpose. This journal is in a droor next to me right now, for some reason I began thinking about it last night. The work is incomplete, I’m not sure why I stopped working on it, but I did. Giving it a brief glance it looks as if it contains about 40 or so handwritten pages that are not only my earliest thoughts on philosophy, but probably also the best indicator of “who I was” at that time, and possibly even “who I am.” But enough history, let’s get on to the real reason I started writing this post…

My philosophy (I’m going to call it that despite the fact that I’m not sure it merits that name) was entitled “The Theory of Enlightened Self-Interest.” I’m not sure now exactly how it would be categorized, probably as social philosophy, philosophy of action, or maybe even ethics. It was a mix of philosophy and psychology that attempted to deal with man from his primal beginnings, subsequently explaining famous historical examples in the light of the theory, eventually arriving at…well, I’m not sure what. I believe it was eventually meant to be a sort of justified normative philosophy, although it also posited that regardless of acceptance of the theory things would be, and always had been a certain way (perhaps I was going to say that fighting against the way things were was the cause of problems?). Like I said, it is unfinished. I remember that I had already dealt with man’s beginnings, society’s beginnings, as well as the explanation in terms of self-interest of figures from Jesus to Hitler.

The point of all of this explanation is this: when I look out at the world what I see (in terms of humans) is an expansive play of self-interest, sometimes recognized, sometimes subconscious. This is what my first philosophy attempted to grasp. And despite being exposed to many more writers and theories since writing those ideas, in many ways the feeling stays with me. Thus, when I am reading, etc. I constantly come upon something and say to myself “I can explain that better, self-interest explains that better.” I still feel from time to time that there was something in those first writings of mine that is worth saving and working on.

However, on the other hand, what I wrote is too simple, too obvious…it seems to me that it can’t possibly be right because of that. Plus there are so many other areas not included, most notably metaphysics, which I feel are needed before I can really posit my ideas with justification. Do I have ideas of how I could work metaphysics in with self-interest? Yes. Do those ideas rest upon presuppositions which are free from objection? No. But can any metaphysics, any philosophy, get away from some starting point, something that is presupposed? I tend to think not.

I’d like to take another look at what I wrote, read it in whole, work on it. There must be some reason that I brought the journal along as one of only 4 books when departing the states. But at the same time there is that nagging feeling that I wrote about above…it’s too simple, it’s too obvious, would some even dare to say it’s not even philosophy? I yearn for that feeling of surety and accomplishment that I had when writing my first philosophy, all too often now (as I have written about before) I find myself unable to hold a stong opinion. But to some extent the belief in self-interest, in my first writings, remains with me and makes itself present from time to time. Who knows if I will ever look at, let alone work on, what I once started.